Wednesday August 3
“Though your seeds are tiny
you grow with fierce will”
I am still settling into this year’s work rhythms: visiting friends and trading summertime stories; catching up on some early in work-year tasks; sorting. For a while, perhaps, I will explore posts from the Work Day List’s previous years. Laura Grace Weldon’s celebration of Rutabagas fresh from the garden appeared here last year on August 10. Like many strong poems, Weldon sets us a table that looks ordinary but turns to become a gate into legitimate wonder. Still pretty cheeky. Wise too.
Try reading it out loud with some pauses.
john sj
Today’s Post: “Rutabaga”
You darken as my knife slices
blushing at what you become.
I save your thick leaves
and purple skin
to feed the cows.
A peasant guest at any meal
you agree to hide in fragrant stew
or gleam nakedly
in butter and chives.
Though your seeds are tiny
you grow with fierce will
grateful for poor soil and dry days,
heave up from the ground
under sheltering stalks
to sweeten with the frost.
Tonight we take you into our bodies
as if we do you a favor—
letting your molecules
become a higher being,
one that knows music and art.
But you share with us
what makes you a rutabaga.
Through you we eat sunlight,
taste the soil’s clamoring mysteries,
gain your seed’s perfect might.
“Rutabaga” by Laura Grace Weldon,
Tending (Aldrich Press, 2013).
© Laura Grace Weldon. Presented
here by poet submission.
Art credit: “Rutabaga,” unknown
medium, by Lara Call Gastinger.
© Lara Call Gastinger, 2004.
